


There's Always A Cost

by Wix



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Consequences, Fall of SHIELD, Fallout, Gen, It was a stupid plan, Not Natasha Romanov Friendly, Not Steve Rogers Friendly, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Realizations, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 23:30:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12946365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wix/pseuds/Wix
Summary: Steve has to deal with some harsh truths following the fall of SHIELD.





	There's Always A Cost

**Author's Note:**

> Authors Notes:  
> So this is another one of those short stories that are just sitting on my computer. Sometimes I hold onto them because I think they might be able to be folded into a larger story at a later time, but eh - I figured I'd post this one anyways. 
> 
> Heads up - if you think that what Steve and Company did at the end of Winter Soldier was a brilliant or even reasonable plan in any sense of the word - this story is not for you. 
> 
> Please enjoy.

The first time that Steve sees Tony after the fall of Hydra is almost a whole eleven days later. The Tower has been relatively quiet in this time, with Natasha stepping out to deal with any senators half-baked schemes to try and put some kind of blame on Steve and his team and Steve hasn’t mentioned that he’s surprised that Tony hasn’t stepped out in their defense as he usually does, ruffling and un-ruffling feathers in the way that he seems born to do before easing everyone else’s worries and making these things disappear. The brunet hasn’t made any calls, or come into the open common rooms while they’re there, making a loud spectacle of himself in the ‘hey look at me and pay attention to me’ way that he always did whenever the Avengers were around before.

He’d expected to see him stroll in with his sunglasses on and a drink in his hand the first time he saw him again, but that isn’t the image that Steve gets when Tony does finally come stumbling in. The Avengers hear the strange sound of the repulsors approaching late one night and they turn off the television in order to finally greet their current landlord and part-time consulting member. The armor lands on the small landing pad before taking a strange half-step forward as if the pilot had been unable to fully stick the landing. For a brief second, Steve wonders if Tony is hurt in some way, shape or form and therefore shouldn’t be in the armor at all. The thought of him being injured falls away though when the mechanical arms come up and remove the armor plates from his body and he pitches forward for a second, taking an unsteady step as if drunk and he leans against the wall.

“Stark?” Steve asks, and he can’t help the tone of disapproval in his voice. He’s seen the footage of the damage that Tony can get up to when he’s drunk driving the suit and now really isn’t the time for the billionaire to get his kicks out of his own ingenuity and put people in danger. Tony turns and looks at him and instantly Steve knows he isn’t drunk. He looks _exhausted_ in a way that Steve’s never really seen anyone pull off before, and there’s this strange, almost haunted look in his eyes when he looks up at them all.

“What are you doing here?” He asks, and his voice is soft, far softer than Steve has ever heard it before and it seems like it’s taking everything left in Tony to stay standing and ask it.

“You agreed to house the Avengers, remember?” Steve reminds him, wondering if the resident ‘genius’ has forgotten such a fact in his current state of exhaustion.

“That was years ago.” Tony replies and Nat slides off of the chair she’s been sitting on and comes over to Steve’s side.

“You said the offer was always open.” She offers forth with a kind echo to her voice, like she’s soothing a wild animal and Tony looks like he’s going to say something before he just seems to opt to ignore them and trudges off towards the bedrooms.

“You look like crap Stark.” Clint says playfully. “Perhaps you should tone it down on the partying? You’re not a young man anymore.” He says and Tony’s whole body locks in place.

“Partying?” He whispers almost as if to himself. “ _Partying?_ ” He repeats and this time it’s a little bit louder and there’s a new tone in Tony’s voice that takes a second to register with Steve – its rage.

 ** _“Sir, perhaps you should get some rest before interacting with your house guests.”_** JARVIS comes over the speakers and Tony takes a second, a thrumming energy in his body before he slowly nods and unclenches his fists and continues down the hallway out of sight. Steve gives Nat and Clint a confused look and receives two unconcerned shrugs about the brunet’s behavior so he doesn’t say anything about it.

He wakes up immediately from his sleep when he hears the sound of shattering glass coming from somewhere nearby and he’s out of bed as fast as he can possibly be, grabbing the shield from its perch from the door as he steps out of his room quietly. He sees Nat and Clint exit their rooms a brief second later, already armed and he nods at them as they all make their way to the kitchen area where the noise originated from, entering it slowly so as to not be caught off guard by any enemy who has possibly entered the premises.

What he sees instead of what he’s expecting makes him freeze.

Tony’s sitting on the floor, his face hidden in his hands as his body shakes with near silent sobs. It’s clear that he doesn’t know that they’ve come in and Steve notices a broken glass a few feet away, leaking some kind of amber liquid everywhere and Steve realizes that Tony must have thrown it before he collapsed into whatever this fit is.

“Tony?” Steve asks softly, lowering his arm and looking at the billionaire who looks so tiny and so sad right now. It almost breaks Steve’s heart and he wonders what could have brought someone like Tony Stark down to this level. He’s never seen Tony like this before, he’s never seen a weakness or anything resembling true human emotions that didn’t seem calculated moments prior and this sudden shift is making Steve unsure of his footing with the brunet. “Are you okay?” He asks as he slowly starts to come over and Tony lifts his face to look at Steve and there’s that haunted look in his eyes from before again. “Hey…are you okay?”

“…Why didn’t you call me?” Tony rasps out a few seconds later and it throws Steve for a second, unsure as to what Tony’s talking about.

“What?”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Tony repeats and Steve’s unsure why, but the brunet’s voice is starting to come out stronger and almost angrier. It takes him a moment to realize what Tony might be referring to.

“I told you why.” He reminds him, gently trying to remind him of the brief thirty second conversation that they had days ago and Tony shakes his head.

“No. You told me what was happening.”

“No, I said that Hydra had been all around us.”

“That’s the ‘what was happening’ part of the story. I want to know the _why_.” There’s an accusation in Tony’s voice now and Steve feels himself responding to it.

“We didn’t know who to trust.” He says back to him, slightly defensively.

“You didn’t know who to trust…” Tony repeats and he looks at Steve like Steve is the dumbest piece of work that he’s ever seen. “You didn’t know who to trust? So…you’re saying that you found out that SHIELD was Hydra and instead of reaching out to outside and less likely to be Hydra sources, you decided to trust _more_ SHIELD agents and do what they told you to?” Tony’s incredulous tone is like sandpaper suddenly and already Steve’s done with this conversation. Tony wasn’t there and he doesn’t understand what it was like or what they went through. He won’t have Tony challenging his decisions after the fact, Steve did the best he could and in the end it payed off.

“It was Fury and Nat.” He snaps and Tony lets out a shaky, harsh laugh.

“Fury is a spy who should have realized that _something_ was going on long before Project Insight. The fact that he _didn’t_ know is suspect and therefore makes him either willfully blind, arrogantly blind or just plain stupid.” Tony spits out. “And newsflash, Natasha is a fucking turncoat. It’s what she does, it’s all she knows how to do. Not exactly two shining paragons of virtue there.” Tony snarls and Steve bristles at the insults to his friends from this ‘playboy philanthropist’.

“And what? I should have trusted _you_?”

“It would have made more fucking sense than going to _Wilson_.”

“Look, I’m sorry that we didn’t give you your ten minutes of spotlight-”

“What?” There’s the disbelieving rage again, but Steve’s already finished with the brunet’s pity party for not being able to be the hero on scene.

“-to cater to your ego.” He’s read the reports, and it’s disgusting to actually see them in action.

“My ego?” Tony repeats slowly before he continues with a snarl. “My _ego_? Are you fucking kidding me right now? I don’t give a damn about that, about any of that!” Steve almost wants to roll his eyes at the falseness of that statement but he refrains. “I care about the fact that we have _hundreds_ of casualties because of your bullshit handling of this situation.”

“They were Hydra.” Steve snaps back at him and he leans back when Tony finally starts to push himself off the ground and try to stand toe to toe with him.

“Even if I were talking about Hydra – which I’m not – what would that have mattered? So fucking what if they were Hydra, that doesn’t mean that they deserved to die.” Tony snarls. “And you better be glad that I’m not talking Hydra because the number goes up. I’m only talking SHIELD.”

“No one who was actually with SHIELD was on those ships.” Steve fires back, not backing down to the brunet in his space. “And I’m not saying that it’s okay that they died just because they’re Hydra. But you would have known that they weren’t SHIELD if you had bothered to show up at the debriefing Stark.”

“I’m not talking the fucking helicarriers you jackass.” Tony snaps. “JARVIS – pull it up.” Steve watches as Tony’s signature holographic screens pop up in the kitchen. There are dozens and dozens of pictures that look like employee photos on them and Steve isn’t sure where Tony is going with this. “Concetta Christensen.” A photo enlarges of a middle aged woman before Tony does some complicated gesture with his fingers, no doubt controlling the computer images and immediately the image is seconded by the horrible image of a dead body with its face blown off. “Undercover SHIELD agent for seven years.” Tony growls at him. “ _Murdered_ when the SHIELD data files hit the web and her ‘employers' learned of her double agent status.” Steve shakes his head but Tony presses on. “Harold Maurer,” a new photo pulls up before being replaced with what seems to be a video of an execution. Tony's not kind enough to turn off the sound or stop the video before the shot rings out and Maurer dies. “Mary McKinney, SHIELD witness protection and her family.” Tony pulls up what looks to be a family photo before a flick of his fingers and a horrifying image of dead bodies strewn around a living room appears. Steve almost feels like he’s going to be sick.

“Stop.” Steve says and Tony presses on.

“Terry Russell, Diana Salazar, Linda Schreiner, Robert Villalobos, Jesus Baker, Victor Koehn-” Tony says as images keep rising up after he says their names as if summoning them from the depths and horrible, violent images replace the calm smiling ones almost instantaneously.

“Stark that’s enough!” Clint growls, coming forward and grabbing at his arm but Tony shoves him off, stepping up into Steve’s space and listing names from memory like a man possessed.

“Heather Torbert, Wesley Boice, Marshall Keith, Helen Goodson, Jeremy Poe-”

“Stark!” Natasha snarls “You’ve made your point.”

“No I haven’t!” Tony snaps back. “What? Can’t look at them? Don’t want to see all of the lives that _you_ helped end with your stupidity?”

“Shut up.” Steve manages to get past shaky vocal chords.

“Lawrence Kates, John Pena, Edward Sheppard, Joyce-” Steve doesn’t even remember swinging, just suddenly Tony is on the ground and the security functions of the Tower are active, pointing at the three of them.

 ** _“You will back away from Mr. Stark”_** JARVIS’s calm and cold voice states. **_“Or I will be forced to escalate this.”_**

“It’s fine JARVIS.” Clint says, moving slowly towards Steve and Steve himself is breathing heavily as the images say floating in the air. “Hey, it’s okay.” Clint whispers to him and Tony lets out a hiccupped sounding sob and for the first time Steve realizes that the haunted look in the other man’s eyes, that it’s because of this.

“Are you okay Tony?” Natasha asks, moving to go to Tony’s side and one of the guns lights up with the familiar ARC energy as a clear threat for her to maintain her distance. She listens, taking a step back while Tony lets out a disbelieving chuckle at her question.

“How can you even ask that? What part of any of this is okay?” He whispers, sounding tortured for a moment before he slowly pushes himself up to his feet and leaves the kitchen without so much as a backwards glance. Steve can’t stop the shaking in his hands as the images stay up for a few more moments before shutting down and Steve feels like he can breathe again.

“What just happened?” Clint asks and Natasha sighs.

“Fury mentioned how Stark became involved in the ‘incident’.” She says slowly, looking at the area where the brunet has exited. “He neglected to mention how he was involved. I thought it was just computer work, getting the files locked up again.”

“Fury reached out to Stark?” There’s surprise in Clint’s voice and she shakes her head.

“No, Stark just showed up.” She replies and Steve thinks for a second about what she’s said.

“Computer work? What kind of computer work?”

“Locking the files back down.” She says like it should be obvious. “You didn’t really think that they were just going to stay out there?”

“But…we put them all out there.” Steve says unsure. "Once they're out, they're out." She shakes her head at his statement.

“We got rid of all the security features on them to get to the Hydra files. Sure, the SHIELD files had to go as well, but we knew that we’d be able to come in and pull them from the public and have access to everything without any more firewalls or red tape.” She does a small shrug. “It wasn't ideal, but it made our lives easier.” She sighs. “Well…nothing else we can do tonight. I’ll talk with Stark in the morning.” She says, reaching out for Steve and starting to lead him to his room.

“Nat…did we do that?” Steve asks when he finds himself at his door and she shakes her head.

“They knew the risks when they signed on.” She tells him. “And remember, we’re not the ones who pulled the triggers.” The words are meant to be assuring but Steve finds himself standing inside his room for the rest of the night when sleep refuses to return to him.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love to know what you think!  
> However, as per usual - no reviews of a negative or critiquing nature.


End file.
